LIKE many teenagers in the 1980s, Jess Walters grew up listening to UB40 songs. The Birmingham band were summing up a nation with their lyrics about a selfish Britain and she loved it.

Twenty years later, Jess was listening to UB40 again - this time because she was writing the story to the new musical Promises and Lies, which opens at Birmingham Repertory Theatre next week. And this time round she actually managed to meet some of the guys.

"There was something very exciting about UB40," she says. "I was growing up in London and here was a band which was black and white playing reggae. It was saying there wasn't any need to be segregated musically. It was brilliant.

"And you know I did have a bit of a crush on Ali Campbell. He just looked so cool. When I met the band to talk through the music for the show I thought I was

meeting just Brian Travers and Jimmy Brown and then they told me Ali was coming.

"But they are such normal guys that once we sat down and got to work it just felt normal. I had to stop myself and say 'who am I to be telling these guys what kinds of songs they should write?'"

In fact Jess was very much the person telling them which songs to write. The musical features a back catalogue of UB40 songs including One in Ten, Can't Help Falling in Love and Higher Ground but also needed two new songs and the guys needed Jess to explain the story line to ensure the new tracks fitted.

That storyline is a gritty drama set in an unnamed city - which we will all recognise as Birmingham. The original concept was for the show to be a modern day Oliver tale but once Jess got her hands on it, she changed it dramatically.

"I just didn't think the story of some little white kid like Oliver was right for this type of show," she says. "I really wanted to do it, but it needed to be right."

Jess, who quickly convinced the show's director Jonathan Church of the viability of her new storyline, instead turned to the tale of a young homeless woman and her search for identity after being abandoned by her parents. And Jess knew that she needed to try to comprehend the homeless experience if she was to write about it.

"I went out on the streets with a charity called Focus Futures in Birmingham," she says. "And there is a real side to this city that most people don't know. So many of

these people are hidden - they are sleeping under bridges, in tunnels and cellars which house under-ground generators.

"They are constantly being told to move on as if the problem can just be pushed on but so many of them don't have easy solutions because they may have mental health issues or they may be addicted to alcohol or drugs.

"I didn't want to glamorise life on the streets but I also don't want people to put them in a box and judge them. People will respond to these characters because they are very real and it is amazing how they have survived.

"This isn't necessarily comfortable to watch but it is also hilarious because we are often at our funniest when we are dealing with tragedy." ..SUPL: